Karen Thompson Walker Stories Quotations

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.

If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.

I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagined reader, which is a crucial part of learning to tell stories.

Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words.